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Many times we feel a sense of joy when we are doing something. We relate to the work in a much more intrinsic way than compared to other tasks. It takes us back to a child like innocence and brings back memories of joy we felt when we played with stuff and did things. I think this delight should be a key factor that we need to keep in mind when we design a product. It comes from understanding of our users psychology and their pain points which the product is going to solve.

Functional implementation is one thing which is what the like of facebooks and twitter have done and the have solved or created a new way the world interacts. But do you feel the sense of delight when you use these products. I don’t think so.

Very few have accomplished delight in their user experience design. Apple is definitely one of them. In more modern times i feel it is Whatsapp which has accomplished it. To take messaging to such a personal level purely through great UX is phenomenal. Also Maison Ullens. Its one of my all time favorite web designs.

Delight should be definitely one of the UX goals of any product. Delight comes creating a tangible experience of emotions the user resonates with. It comes from creating a sense of assurance in the user, that the design is taking something off the user’s shoulders.

I have around 17 years of IT industry experience but its only since the last 2-3 years that i have been doing UX design as a full time job. And the credit for me becoming a designer goes to my bosses at appZui who were kind enough to give me a macbook pro to create bug tickets using a browser 🙂 I was involved in testing of an iOS product and it was a client mandate that everyone on a team have macbooks for their work. Lucky me !! 🙂 While there isn’t much to say about the whole testing experience, the macbook managed to wake up the designer in me. Using it after using windows for all your life is like waking up from a dream, or a nightmare rather. Despite being a designer i find it hard to articulate the design thinking influence that using a macbook had on me. It was like that scene in Matrix where neo learns kung fu just by getting some programs uploaded into his head. The ease of use, the transparency in design, the seamlessness by which i was able to do my work were some of the major things that i could notice when i started using macbook. the device became me and the simplicity of use carries tremendous influence to this day in how i approach my designs.

Everything in our lives is inspired by nature. One of the best things we can learn from nature is optimizing. If you look at how nature has organized things, they seem perfect without the need to add anything or taking away. One of the most inspiring philosophies from nature itself is minimalism. When we take time away from our busy lives and spend time in nature, we get rejuvenated. Why does this happen ? A lot of clutter from our day to day lives is not around. We enjoy being in nature, i.e we are doing something that we like. Can we bring this attitude back to our daily routine and create better lives for ourselves ?

In an age when we are bombarded with information, we feel lost when we try to find meaning simply because of the clutter this information creates. We don’t want our customers to feel the same way when they use our products. So one of the key driving philosophies of Ensõ is minimalism. We try to keep our designs non bureaucratic, give the customer attention to exactly what he is trying to do and make sure it is done with minimum effort and maximum understanding.

Please do check out The Minimalists . They are doing an amazing job giving minimalism back to the world

When you create big websites with tons of pages consistency becomes the key. Having a design system before creating artifacts goes a long way in bringing about this consistency. One of the best design philosophies that help designers create repeatable and consistent components across the entire website is Atomic Design by Brad Frost.

Atomic Design takes building blocks from nature like atoms and molecules and goes a bit further. There are 5 main building blocks. Atoms, Molecules, Organisms, Templates and Pages. Atoms are the most fundamental elements which cannot be broken down any further e.g. buttons, icons. For further reading please visit Brad Frost’s Atomic Design Website

Today, 15th Sep is celebrated as Engineer’s Day in India. This is in memory of one of the greatest Engineer modern India has produced – Sri M. Visvesvaraya, who has been recipient of highest civilian award Bharata Ratna and also was knighted by the then British empire*

One of his design was a patented a system of automatic weir water floodgates, which was first installed in Khadakvasla Reservoir near Pune. Based on the success of this design, later the same system was installed at the Tigra Dam in Gwalior and KRS Dam in Mysore.

Simplified model of the flood gate system

Remember, your work may be only to sweep a railway crossing, but it is your duty to keep it so clean that no other crossing in the world is as clean as yours.

-Sri M. Visvesvaraya

Foot note: *Jokingly, I say, English butchered Sri into Sir. The Sanskrit sound of Sri is the recognition of the universal spirit in all and is the most respectful way of addressing someone before using their given name.

Every day top executives of Tata Motors used to take lunch together but from some days, Sumant Moolgaokar used to take his car and go out during Lunch Hours and come back as soon as the Lunch Break was over. There was grapevine that he is offered lunch at a Five Star Hotel by some dealers of Tata. One day when some executives followed him during Lunch Break, they were surprised to see that he stopped his car at one Highway Dhaba, ordered food for him and sat with the drivers of trucks who were eating food at that dhaba. He discussed with them what was good and what was bad in a Tata Truck, jotted down and came back to his office. He used to improve upon the experiences of drivers. Such was Sumant Moolgaokar’s zeal for improving the Tata Vehicles.

TataSumo is the biggest corporate tribute paid by any company to it’s executive. Su stands for Sumant and Mo stands for Moolgaokar in this brand name.

Customer engagement starts with a Deep Concern and Empathy for customer’s situation!

Estimation gets tricky sometimes when you only have requirements. To come up with more accurate estimations we use design to help us. When we get requirements from the customer, we start the design process to come up with Hi-Fidelity designs that helps both the customer and our developers.

The customers give functional feedback that helps the design tune to the requirements. More importantly the developers get a better idea of the amount of work that would need to go in for each of the screens. The QAs get an idea of the number of scenarios that would need to be tested for each of these screen. We start building our product matrix when the screens are ready and then share estimates with our clients.

The screens combined with scenarios and estimates ensure the client is on the same page.